Scott Deugo says he isn’t the biggest maple syrup producer in Eastern Ontario.
Nevertheless, his family-run operation - Fulton’s Pancake House and Sugar Shack near Pakenham, Ontario - includes two huge tanks capable of holding 4,500 gallons of sap.
This spring, those tanks threatened to spill over. The sap was coming in faster than Deugo could boil it into syrup.
He says it was the same right across Eastern Ontario. “It was crazy,” says Deugo. “Every syrup producer that you’ll speak to says it was a record-breaking year. Like, this is the most syrup many of us have made for a number of years.”
“What happened this spring was a sap tsunami,” adds matriarch, Shirley Fulton-Deugo.
It turns out the cold, wet, snowy spring weather that was so depressing for people was actually ideal for maple trees. A perfect syrup storm, if you will.
“When we get snow in the springtime it's called sugar snow,” explains Fulton-Deugo. “That means a promise of more sap. When we get rain it hydrates our trees. When we get cold weather it keeps our maple syrup a very high, light colour. And we had all of those factors this year.”
Don’t expect the bumper crop to result in lower prices, however. Scott Deugo says prices will likely remain stable. This might have been an excellent year, but its bounty might also have to sustain maple syrup producers through lean years ahead. “One of the things about the syrup industry, or any farming, is you never know what the next year is going to bring,” he says.
In other words, despite this year’s sweet run, maple syrup is still a sticky business.
